“The vow.” He gave her a dazed look. “I vowed to give you all that I was.”
So had she. The moisture dried in her mouth. “Oh, Solo, I’m so sorry.” She flattened her palms on his chest, felt the hard thump of his heartbeat. “I never would have agreed to such a switch—”
“Hush,” he said. “In my line of work I had to learn to read lips, too, so we won’t have any problem communicating.”
Yes, but he’d helped her and she’d hurt him. “I’ll never be able to forgive myself. After everything you’ve done for me, I go and do something like this to you, adding to your misery. It’s not fair to you. It’s criminal, actually. I should be punished!”
“You stop that right now. This hearing thing? It doesn’t matter.” He tugged her down so that she sprawled across his chest. “Now listen to what I have to say.” He traced his fingertips along the ridges of her spine. “I will tell you about my past, and you will vow to stay with me anyway.”
An order. One she would heed. There was nothing he could say to change her mind about him.
“I was a contract killer for the government.” He paused, as if expecting her to leap up and run.
She didn’t—she was too stunned.
He continued. “I killed humans, otherworlders, males, females, it didn’t matter. If I was told to kill someone, I killed that someone, no questions asked. I’ve killed a lot of people, Vika.”
She wouldn’t lie. The words were hard to hear, and she flinched. Her man, a killer. But he wasn’t anything like her father, she reminded herself, and she would never think of him that way. Jecis had enjoyed the pain he inflicted. Solo never had, something she would stake her life on.
“I cried after my first kill, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I stared at the body for a long, long time, shaking, sick to my stomach. But I still took the next job, and the next, and eventually what I was doing no longer bothered me. I was cold inside, and glad of it.”
But not now. There was too much regret in his tone.
“Most of what I did was for a good cause, and I know men like me are needed to keep our world safe. But the things I had to do to complete certain jobs . . . I think I’ve always been more like you, because, no matter my reasons, what I was doing was also killing the man I was meant to be. I wish I could undo my past. I wish I could go back and live a different life, but I can’t. I have to live with what I’ve done. And now, I’m asking you to live with it, too.”
She heard the regret, now mixed with insecurity, doubt, guilt, and sorrow. A desire to clean the slate and start fresh. A desire she knew very well. She was surprised she could judge the emotions so precisely, and doubted she could have done so with anyone else, but this was Solo, her Solo, and she knew him in a way she’d never known anyone else.
Vika sat up, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. He waited, tense.
“Everyone regrets things in their past,” she said, and he tensed a little more. “Even me.”
As he watched her lips, he relaxed, but only slightly. “You have done nothing wrong.”
Oh, no. He wasn’t going to absolve her. “Rather than finding a way to free the otherworlders right from the start, I enabled my father to use them. And don’t you dare say I did what I could. I could have done more. My actions were selfish. I wanted out of there permanently and I let them rot while I saved my money.”
“You searched for the key.”
“I could have searched harder. I could have asked Jecis about it.”
“And placed yourself at greater risk.”
“All I’m saying is, we both could have acted differently.”
“Vika—”
“I still want to stay at your farm,” she interjected. “You’re not the man you used to be, and you aren’t a monster.” And she didn’t like that she’d ever implied he could be. No one could see into the heart of a man and know what he felt or why he did what he did. You had to wait and watch for the fruit. An orange tree would always bear oranges. A lemon tree would always bear lemons. “I’m not the girl I used to be, either, and I’m so very—”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said sternly. “With your past, the fact that you helped me at all is amazing enough.”
“Sorry,” she finished anyway.
His frown was chiding.
“We have to forgive ourselves,” she said with a nod. “We can’t live with self-hatred. It’s a terrible emotion, and it will open the door for us to hate others. Hating others will make us like Jecis, and I don’t want to be like Jecis.”
“We can only go on from here,” Solo agreed. “Doing better.”
“We start fresh.” From this moment on, she was no longer the coward who slunk around in the shadows, the timid mouse that cowered in corners, or the victim of constant cruelty. She was filled with hope. She was empowered.
She was with the most magnificent of men.
“As long as you never forget what we’ve done here at this cabin,” Solo said, his voice tender.
Shivering, she replied, “Believe me, I’ll be dreaming about this cabin every time I close my eyes.”
“I have a feeling I will as well.” He reached up, brushed a fingertip over her cheeks. “We’ve talked about the past. Now let’s talk about the future. After I free the otherworlders from the circus, I have to find my friends, John and Blue. They were injured, like me, and from what little I know about the man responsible, terrible things were done to them.”
“I understand.” And she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”
A fierce light in eyes she was used to seeing stare back at her from a mirror—a light she’d never before seen in them. “No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”
“And I’ll take care of you,” she promised. “And when we succeed—and we will, because we’re unstoppable—we’re going on a date. Many dates. You’re going to wine and dine me, and I’m going to dress up and seduce you. We’ll dance and eat and talk and laugh, and have the best time.”
“I’ll agree to those terms on one condition,” he said, and reached down to cup her bottom.
A thrum of need, a breathy moan. “What?”
He licked and sucked at her collarbone. “Solo no good with words. He have to show.”